16/06/2023
NEWS STORY
Round 9 of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship commenced with practice on Friday at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, Montreal as teams prepared for Sunday's 70-lap Canadian Grand Prix.
A technical issue with the track's local CCTV system meant that for safety reasons, FP1 was a non-event - just four minutes into the start of the weekend and after the session was initially red-flagged to recover the stricken Alpine of Pierre Gasly. The subsequent technical problem meant a return to track action failed to materialize in what was scheduled to be a 60-minute outing. MoneyGram Haas F1 Team drivers Kevin Magnussen and Nick Hulkenberg had banked just three laps running on the Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium tires before returning to the garage.
FP2 started 30-minutes earlier than scheduled to allow for an extended 90-minute session in an effort to make up for lost time. Unfortunately for Nico Hulkenberg, his session was to end both abruptly and early with a power-unit issue as he commenced his second timed stint. The German was limited to just 11 laps, with nine of those on the medium compound where he set a time of 1:16.369 (P20) before he swapped onto the reds. Magnussen fared better with a trouble-free session - the Dane delivering a fastest lap of 1:15.189 (P12) on his Quali sim on soft rubber before he reverted back to his earlier set of mediums to log some much needed high-fuel running data. Heavy rain impacted the final minutes of the session with similar conditions forecast for Saturday's qualifying.
Kevin Magnussen: "Today was interrupted by different things, obviously in FP1 and then also in FP2 with both the weather and Nico's car, but we still got most of the stuff done. We got some low-fuel and high-fuel running on both compounds so although disrupted, we got everything we wanted, and it looked okay. We have more running tomorrow, although it looks to be wet, so it's going to be an exciting qualifying."
Nico Hulkenberg: "It was a very disruptive day, obviously for everyone in FP1 with just one lap and then the technical problems we faced, we got compromised there. Then FP2 also didn't last very long, I got one run in and then starting the second one the ICU failed. It's not ideal obviously heading into the rest of the weekend but it is what it is now, we'll see what the other car did, try to learn from that and come up with the best possible package we can tomorrow."
Guenther Steiner, Team Principal: "It was a very disruptive day today, starting off with some of FP1's lost run time being merged with FP2 which was very disruptive for us. FP2 wasn't ideal because Nico's ICU expired, shortening his session, and we only had one car to gather data and we had a lot of stuff we wanted to test. We didn't get any definitive answers. Kevin did a good job, but we would've liked to have done more work with two cars across two sessions."